


like a pain, the truth is mine.

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [259]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: AKA what is everyone up to in these early days, Caranthir is trying to be helpful, Discussion of Death, Gen, Grief and Loss and All That, Mithrim, and also is fed up with Curufin which is a valid way to be, title from a poem by Jane Huffman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:14:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25062970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: Caranthir is not Celegorm. He knows how much they owe Fingon, Fingolfin. He isn’t ashamed by the desire he has for their goodwill, their trust. After all, when the dust and stone settle more comfortably together, Maedhros will want his truest, dearest family again.
Relationships: Caranthir | Morifinwë & Curufin | Curufinwë, Caranthir | Morifinwë & Maedhros | Maitimo, Caranthir | Morifinwë & Maglor | Makalaurë, Caranthir | Morifinwë & Sons of Fëanor
Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [259]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685
Comments: 6
Kudos: 21





	like a pain, the truth is mine.

Caranthir is no artist. Not with paint, nor clay, nor song, nor spoken word. What chance had he? Fourth, and least illustrious son—he was, from birth, more like the legs of a table, or the frame for a painting, or the well for ink. Something that only existed to be a vessel for something else.

With his rosary in his pocket, and a faint, embarrassed desire to race back and unpray the litanies spoken before his uncle’s kind discretion and his brother’s taut profile, he makes for one of Mithrim’s storerooms. This one is small—a sort of pantry, really. Even with the offerings of salt pork, wheat, and potatoes brought by Fingolfin and his company, it looks a little barer than it should on the edge of winter.

They ought to bless the milder climate, perhaps—but even Caranthir does not pray like that anymore.

He is not searching for food, at present. Rather, he has a germ of an idea that is more a hope than anything else. He wants to see if any herbs were overlooked or forgotten when Fingon asked for Mithrim’s medicine. He wants to find a cure, not just for infection or fever. He wants what can comfort and calm. Will that be lavender? Verbena?

It is…a fanciful plan. It is not a very Feanorian one, because it is not well-formed, nor is it particularly clever. Its goal, too, is a continued alliance with their half-kin.

 _Here_ , Caranthir would say, shyly victorious, as Fingon goggled. _I know little of herbs, but this will ease him. This will let him sleep._

And Fingon would thank him, grateful that the one who helped most after Maglor’s invitation—collecting Maedhros’ old clothes and lost belongings—was still so attentive to a brother returned.

Caranthir is not Celegorm. He knows how much they owe Fingon, Fingolfin. He isn’t ashamed by the desire he has for their goodwill, their trust. After all, when dust and stone settle more comfortably together, Maedhros will want his truest, dearest family again.

_We didn’t mean to leave you. See, I have brought you everything I have._

Except—here, in the larder, there are no more herbs, only flour, root vegetables and a barrel of lake-fish. What was he _thinking_?

He slams the cupboard shut, then hears a dry cough behind him. It is Curufin, slanting an amused gaze at him from the doorway. Curufin, for all his smugness, does not look well. He is pinched and pale and the darkness around his eyes resembles bruising. No ease and no rest, for Curufin.

“What are you doing? I thought you were…keeping vigil.”

“I was on an errand for medicine,” Caranthir answers. It isn’t a lie, and if it were, why should he care? Curufin lies all the time.

“You’re no doctor, Carnistir,” Curufin says, apparently seeing through the lie. Caranthir wants to respond to _that_ with his fist rather than his tongue. The name was his mother’s. But Curufin wants his anger, and the only way to beat Curufin is to withhold what he desires. 

Athair never did, of course. Curufin was his favorite, and as long as he lived, Athair’s power shielded him. Ruined him, but that’s too deep to contemplate, standing here with nothing but air between them, with so much else between them and the past.

“I am not a doctor,” he agrees. “But I _am_ surprised that you, above anyone, trust our half-cousin to attend to Maitimo completely.”

“Indeed, it is the _only_ thing I trust.” Curufin has combed and trimmed his hair, or had someone do it for him, and he is wearing an old kerchief of Athair’s around his throat. Caranthir recognizes the print. With his love of colors, of mementos, he will always recognize, though he cannot create.

Curufin’s homages are very differently rooted than Caranthir’s; sickness more than grief.

Defeated in his original purpose (though with no intention of admitting as much to Curufin), Caranthir pushes out into the corridor. Curufin trails him. Caranthir thinks he hates this brother, sometimes. Athair left them with an awful task, once; Mother merely left them. The memories are foul, and foul what they touch.

In little more than a month’s time, this brother will be seventeen years old. For little more than a month after that, he will share his age with Caranthir. But for the twins, they are closest in time.

He can flee from Curufin in endless circles, in the fort or in his mind, or he can do what he has had to do all his life: reject the mocking contrast borne of their proximity, and forge on.

He sets his shoulders like he is someone else. Past the sickroom. Past their shared chambers. He knows—and Curufin can likely guess, by the direction of their steps—where Maglor is hiding.

“Let us in,” Caranthir says, at the door of Rumil’s study. “It’s just us.”

Maglor’s voice is muffled through the door. Still, it is thin and disdainful, because Maglor may not sing anymore but he can infuse his every utterance with feeling. “It isn’t locked.”

Caranthir tries the handle then, feeling rather stupid.

Curufin chuckles.

Inside, Maglor is wrapped in his coat, though the study is not much colder than the other rooms of the fort farthest from the central fireplace and the kitchen’s woodstove.

“What do you want?” Maglor asks wearily. One glance tells Caranthir that he has not had much sleep.

“He’s taken the weight of the world on his shoulders,” Curufin says, studying a map as if they haven’t stared at all of them—itching, scrawling, river-lined—for months. “How is our brother, Caranthir? Celegorm isn’t one for much talk.”

“You’ve been with Maedhros?” Maglor asks. It isn’t exactly eagerness, in him. Caranthir wishes that it was.

“Yes,” he says. And then, because he thinks it will hurt Curufin, even if Curufin mocks him for it, “I prayed beside him.”

Silence from both of them. Both of these brothers, who are, perhaps, most different from himself.

“Why haven’t you seen him again?” Caranthir asks. Is this what it feels like, to hold power?

Maglor does not answer. His face, turned towards the wall, is cold. Only Maglor could look cold under lamplight. Caranthir told Maedhros, early this morning, that Ulfang was a traitor. A dead traitor. He did not think much of it as he spoke, then, because it was only part of a patchwork, part of life’s old remnants, made into something that could give Maedhros strength. Here in Rumil’s study, he feels as if he lied, telling only half that story.

Ulfang is dead because Maglor killed him in this room. Murdered him—was right to do it—murdered him, nonetheless.

“Fingon,” Curufin says, tipping the name in poison, like a dart, “Is taking such good care of our brother. For now, we can be grateful.”

“For now?” Caranthir has tried to be patient, he really has, but he rises to this latest bait despite himself.

“Don’t you trust Fingon?” Maglor asks, haunted and tired, not knowing that he is echoing Caranthir’s question of a few moments before.

“I trust that he will do everything in his power to save our brother’s life.” Curufin shifts his gaze lazily to meet Caranthir’s, then shifts his eyes to Maglor again. “Fingon did what we could not, Maglor. No one will ever forget that.”

“I certainly cannot,” Maglor mutters, one hand a club of knuckles against the desk, the other crossing his brow.

“Of course,” Curufin says. “No one will ever forget _that_ , either.”

“Oh, stop talking in riddles,” Caranthir snaps. He wishes for—no, he wishes he _could_ wish for Celegorm to be here. There was a time…it is long ago, now…that Celegorm would have slapped a little of Curufin’s nonsense out of him. But that was when Celegorm had Maedhros, just as they all had Maedhros. Now Celegorm is wary and stupid. Caranthir must do this alone. “Are you saying Fingon has another motive, or are you not?”

“It’s the same motive they’ve always had,” Curufin says archly. There is a bruise on his throat, peeking out from the edge of the neckerchief. Caranthir stares at it too long, and Curufin turns away, before adding, in a quick, ruthless way, “Fingolfin and the lot have always felt that they could do what Athair did, better. Lead better. Serve the family better. Now they have their chance. We were a little preoccupied holding on for dear life, here, these past months. That may have impressed the men of Mithrim, but it looks like weakness to a pack of hotblooded fools. We look weak to them, and they’ve a perfect opportunity to make us weak before everyone else. By the by, what did you come here to tell Maglor, Caranthir? Come to say that he should crawl back to that sickroom and beg Fingon to tell him when it is right to enter?”

Maglor was pale, before. Now the heat rushes back to his cheeks. “That isn’t what happened! Fingon had—”

“I don’t know what happened,” Curufin returns, almost airily. Another aping of Athair’s manner. “But if you and Celegorm were welcome there— _permitted_ there—wouldn’t you both spend night and day at his side? Unless, of course, you do not _want_ …”

Caranthir chokes on an answer, but Maglor throws up a hand, looking rather like Athair himself, and speaks first. “Don’t mistake your wit for knowledge, Curufin,” he retorts. “I know Maedhros better than anyone. He can’t _rest_ if he’s worrying about _me_. And I can’t hide how I feel, seeing him so wounded. So—so thin and—” The hand drops, draws inwards, hovers over his lips. He says, in his own fashion of prayer, “I’m letting him rest.”

“Fingon doesn’t let him rest,” Curufin counters. “Fingon is busy healing him. Healing changes people, Maglor. You and I don’t want it for just that reason.”

A curious silence. Maglor glares. Curufin shrugs. They understand each other, maybe, or Caranthir is too lost to guess another truth. Everything Curufin says is a move in a game; a chance taken. Does he ever go too far? Say too much?

Did he say too much, just then?

Caranthir shakes his head to clear it. He does not care, suddenly, whether Maglor or Curufin or Celegorm visit Maedhros. Whether or not they can _bear_ to. He will continue his sojourns there; he will listen to Fingon and Fingolfin when they say that Maedhros has had enough.

_To comfort. To calm._

He is nothing like his father. It is, in some ways, as simple as that.

“I do not care what either of you choose,” he says. “But Maedhros misses us. All of us. I know he does. And we are going to have to face him if we want to help him.”

“Are we?”

Damn Curufin, always wanting the last word.

“Going to help him? Lord, I hope so,” Caranthir answers, over his shoulder. He shuts the door behind him quickly, so that Curufin cannot have what he wants.


End file.
